Monday, April 27, 2015

Ok, provocative title. What makes me say that DemocRat Party members are pro-crime? As in: they like crime, and work towards creating more of it.

That's a hell of a thing to say, right?

Well here's why.

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.

Before a crowd at the National Action Network in Harlem, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito says some simple crimes like drinking alcohol in public, or urinating in the street should be handled more like parking violations.
"We are examining way in which we can expand the use of summons and desk appearance tickets" she said.
A pair of bills proposed in the City Council would decriminalize several low-level offenses.
The list also includes bicycling on a sidewalk, being in a park after dark, littering, failing to obey a sign and making excessive noise.
Reverend Al Sharpton says over policing of minor crimes like these often creates tension between community and law enforcement.
"Until police understand mutual respect, we will continue having these tensions" he said.

What do we know about crime in New York City? It used to be pretty bad, right? Mayor David Dinkins presided over a period when New York City was the Murder Capital of the USA.

But then it stopped. The reason why it stopped was two policies instituted by Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The first was to defeat corruption in the NYC police departments. Hundreds were fired or took early retirement because they were taking payoffs from street punks and landlords to look the other way. Firing them all put the NYPD into a condition to pursue the second policy, Broken Windows.

Broken Windows was a policy of arresting, charging and jailing "street youths" for petty crime. The concept was that one broken window in a building quickly leads to more being broken, because it looks like nobody cares. Shoplifting, loitering, pissing in the street, littering, J-walking, spitting, noise complaints, graffiti all got punks busted and booked at the precinct house. It was discovered that by doing that the police quickly collected ALL THE ASSHOLES who were doing ALL THE CRIME in the city. By arresting and detaining maybe a thousand people out of a city of ten million, they had pretty much stopped property crime and mugging in New York City.

Then, having cleaned up the gutters, they went up the food chain a little and started busting all the crappy little stores and "restaurants" that the street dealers and muggers were working out of. Noise complaints, health code, fire code, all that type of thing got enforced instead of the old baksheesh looking the other way. Plenty of criminal enterprises got shut down.

So many got shut down that they created a crisis in the real estate business. No legitimate business could afford the rents. Only drug dealers could. So when all the drug dealers got jailed or chased out, suddenly all these huge landlords were stuck with no renters and no cash flow. The commercial real estate of New York City was standing on a foundation of drug money. Pressure was brought to bear.

Result, Mayor Bloomberg who undid all the work Giuliani accomplished as quick as he could.

Now we have New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito moving to defang the police even further. Why? She -knows- crime will increase if this policy is followed. Everybody knows. Its obvious.

Therefore we must conclude more crime is what she's after.

More corruption, graft, baksheesh, payola. If the foundation of the NYC corporate profit structure is drug money, then they want more drug money. Lots and lots more, right away, and anybody who says different better prepare themselves for the Smear Machine.

The reason Al Sharpton is involved is that the vast majority of the people Giuliani arrested were young Black men. DemocRats hide their intent to increase crime behind the fig leaf of race, as if Giuliani's policy was to arrest only Black men. That's the fig leaf Ms. Mark-Viverito is taking cover behind now.

Problem for them is, the fig leaf has been tattered down to a postage stamp. Everybody knows that >5% of the population in a city does 95% of the crime. Everybody knows that number is overwhelmingly composed of Black males in NYC. Everybody knows that the way to get crime and robbery and murder out of a city is to bust every little prick making a bloody nuisance of himself on the sidewalk or in the subway. Because they already did it. The 1990s wasn't long enough ago that everyone has forgotten it.

Everybody knows its not about racism. The newsies still pretend, but the recent rioting in Baltimore and Ferguson have effectively ripped away the mask. Al Sharpton and the assholes rioting in Baltimore this week do not give a single damn about some kid who got killed by police. As I saw somebody say elsewhere, most of those rioters would have stepped over his body like road kill if they found him lying someplace. They just want an excuse to steal booze and break shit.

Now what they do in China when the Chicom cops do something horrific, which is a regular occurrence, is they get the whole town together and they go attack the cop shop. They drag all the cops into the street and beat them, burn the building down, the whole works. Cops shops in China get burnt down about monthly due to shit like this. Because logic, right? Cops do something, townies go after them. In plenty of rural areas of China the cops walk very carefully.

But not in America.

In America they loot the 7-11. Because the 7-11 has beer, not because the 7-11 owner did something bad.

The truth is that none of the "protesters" give a shit about Justice or Freddie Gray, they just want to loot, burn and beat up White people. You can tell by all the looting, burning and White people getting beat up.

So, Brad, Larry, Vox -- congratulations. You've spoiled the party. Not just mine, but everyone's. I waited nearly a half century to get here, and when I do get here, there's ashes. It hurts. Not just me. Everyone. And I don't care how you dodge and weasel, how you rend your garments
and play the victim game, how you pretend it's everyone else's fault --
that's bullshit. You've made it impossible to have a Hugo ceremony that
is a joyous celebration of the best in our genre.

Many of the same people won Hugo AND Nebula nomination. They were
well connected, very much part of the clique that spent a lot of time
talking to each other. This is a fact. There is ample evidence of the
same. Strangers did not gain nomination. The power brokers, publishers,
editors, agents, even influential reviewers were and probably still are
part of this ‘In’ group.
Do you honestly, truly believe that those were ‘the best’?
Do you honestly, truly believe that they behaved one way in SFWA…
gained great success with it there… and never ever repeated the same
very successful pattern elsewhere? It only took 30-40 votes to get onto
the nomination shortlist for the Hugo in some categories.

I've been reading SF/F for a -long- time, and I've been seeing the Hugo and Nebula awards going to unreadable crap for most of that time. By "unreadable crap" I mean things that make no sense, things that are boring, or (and this is a main complaint of mine) things that make you feel dirty after you read them.

Authors like David Gerrold and books like The Man Who Folded Himself are the kind of thing I'm talking about. The Man Who Folded Himself was nominated for a bunch of awards including the Hugo and the Nebula. [Corrected, thanks Nicolas.] Its a terrible book. I read it in the 1970's when it came out, thinking a Hugo meant it would be Awesome, and after struggling through the damn thing felt like I needed a shower.

But because a bunch of More Highbrow Than Thou VIPs thought is was an "Important" book, despite being a rip-off of Heinlein's "All You Zombies" from 1959, it got nominated.

Its always been that way in my adult lifetime. "Important" books get awards, good books don't. For the most part in my experience, a Hugo on the cover means "take a pass on that one!" There are exceptions of course, as I have to throw in for the Nit Picker Battalion, but its been a rule that has served me well over the years. Hugo = politically correct deviant horseshit, 8/10 times.

That's why I'm so pleased with the Sad Puppies campaigns. Finally we get to serve a big steaming plate of FUCK OFF! to the Highbrow Cognoscenti and their fucked up Important Books. Proud to be a part of it.

I also think this is a culturally important campaign. Here's why:

Voice of Fire.

This painting is called Voice of Fire. It hangs in the National Gallery of Canada. They paid well over a MILLION BUCKS for it because it is an "Important" painting. That would be ~$1,750,000 tax dollars. My money.

The people who made this travesty possible long ago utterly ruined Fine Art. They have finally come for Science Fiction. The painting Voice of Fire is a graphic representation of the Hugo Awards and all the underhanded machinations it contains.

Sad Puppies is me doing my small part to jam a stick in their spokes. The consternation and rage apparent on all the "fan" sites (like I'm not a fan) make it plain that IT WORKED and some snotty SJW fuckers have done a huge faceplant on the hard concrete of Reality (TM).

Incidentally, for all you -stupid- cocksuckers out there with the Guilt By Association thing going on, please feel free to link me with Vox Day and the Rabid Puppies. I have no connection to any of those guys and I didn't nominate anything on the Rabid Puppy slate, but since the facts don't matter just go ahead and smear me with that.

I don't actually care what any of y'all do, given that my comrades and I are KICKING YOUR ASSES. Best $40 I ever spent.

Friday, April 24, 2015

The new DC Wonder Woman film has claimed its first casualty: the director.

Not long after it was announced that Warner Bros. and DC Comics would be producing a Wonder Woman feature film starring Gal Gadot in the title role, the studio made clear their intention to hire a female director for the project. In November, they secured Michelle MacLaren, whose credits including episodes of Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul.

Now, MacLaren has departed the project over "creative differences."

DC discovering yet again that the most important thing about a movie director, particularly for a comic book movie, is not if they sit down to pee.

Oh dear, did that upset some of you?

I would like at this time to direct all the outraged SJWs and other reading-until-offended types to the following movie: Thunderbirds. It sucked. Hard.

Directed by precisely the wrong director, Jonathon Frakes, and written by people who did not know a single thing about the original Thunderbirds series. The most important thing about Jonathon Frakes, for the purposes of making Thunderbirds, was not his personal plumbing, or surface albedo, or any of the other horseshit that SJWs get bent out of shape over.

Quote from Wikipedia: "During development, creator Gerry Anderson was invited to act as creative consultant, but was left out when the studio felt there were enough employees on the payroll acting as part of the creative team. The studio offered him $750,000 (£432,000) to attend the premiere but Anderson could not accept money from people he had not worked for. He eventually saw the film on DVD and was disappointed, declaring "It was disgraceful that such a huge amount of money was spent with people who had no idea what Thunderbirds was about and what made it tick."[8] He also said that it was "the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my entire life."

Thunderbirds cost $50 million bucks to make, and only every recovered half of it.

This Wonder Woman movie is going to suck as hard or possibly even harder than Thunderbirds did, and for the same reasons. The thing will be getting written by people who don't give a shit about Wonder Woman, its being staffed and cast by people who are clearly putting feminist politics ahead of EVERYTHING else including profit, its going to be directed by some pinhead who's got lots of Social Justice Warrior/Feminist cred and zero talent, and it will be promoted as some kind of political feminist propaganda film. Which no one in their right mind will want to pay money to go see. It will be on Netflix three months after the release.

And that is why it will suck. The only way for it not to suck is if somebody who gave two shits about Wonder Woman as a character got in there to run it, and fired every single feminist sympathizer and political apparatchik off the thing. Then and only then could they tell a story worth telling. For starters they could hire a Greek chick to be the main character. Gal Gadot is a -fine- looking woman and may even be able to act (I've never seen her in anything) but she is not a Greek Amazon girl. Her neck is too small, for one thing. And her wrists.

See, what's hilarious is that these Hollywood goofs would hire a slim, poofy lipped fashion model to portray a sword swinging, ass kicking, monster hunting warrior woman who can bench press a Buick. And call it Feminism! because "teh director is a Woman!"

But what's even funnier is watching the SJWs lap it up. You people are -stupid-.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Armed with high-tech software and years of crime data, Miami police believe they will soon be able to stop crimes by predicting when and where they will occur.

It sounds a little like something out of a science fiction novel, but the department is in the process of adopting a system called HunchLab that produces maps showing small areas where specific crimes are likely to be committed during shifts. The probability program is a geographical version of "predictive policing" software, which more departments are using — even if, in the words of one supportive cop, it's "kind of scary."

Similar algorithm-based programs have been credited with lowering crime rates in cities around the country, and some South Florida departments recently have adopted their own systems. In Miami's case, the department is funding the implementation of HunchLab and other software programs with a $600,000 federal grant doled out by the Bureau of Justice Assistance to encourage smart policing tactics.

Miami accepted the grant in November. On Thursday, the city commission will vote on a $120,000 contract with Florida International University to have Rob Guerette, an associate professor of criminal justice, study the department's program and run tests ahead of its launch.

What this really means is that some guy scammed the Miami PD into paying him $120k to do what could be done with a box of little red pins and a map. But he's doing it with a [gasp!] COMPUTER so that makes it all science fictiony!

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Well my friends, I have here an example of why we Sad Puppies are sad, and why we must take it out on the Hugos.
This is a comment from "Greg" I found over at John Scalzi's blog, Whatever.

thephantom: Couldn't figure out who and what to vote for myself, right? … Its all down to Torgersen and Correia, not to forget the odious Vox Day. Right?
A quick look at your blog (http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/04/authors-dont-even-make-minimum-wage.html) shows you doing nothing but parroting the charges by VD, so, yeah, apparently not. Why are authors paid so little? You explain by reproducing VD's sermon:

the "professional organizations" of various literary genres have been taken over by raving Leftists. The one that simply LEAPS to mind is of course the SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. As well, over the last 30 years the awards given for Science Fiction and Fantasy such as the Nebula Awards, the Hugo Awards etc. have uniformly rewarded dreadful message fiction over good stories that have succeeded in the marketplace.

Nuh uh. And y'all are a racist for even thinking this might be racist. Because… well I'm not sure why, but RAAAAACIST!!!!!! Also, nerds are racists. Because anybody who applies Rationalism to anything is RAAAAACIST!!!!! Why, you ask? Asking "why?" is RAAAAACIST!!!!!!!! The Phantom RAAAAACIST!!!!!

and I voted for people whose books are in my library, or whose works I have read and liked, or whom I have at least heard of. Meaning mostly the Sad Puppies Slate,

In short?

I voted … mostly the Sad Puppies Slate

So, no, you didn't figure out what to vote for yourself. You're a meat puppet for the slate. Congratulations on your new found "freedom".
Why did you vote or those things? For the exact same reason VD asked you to vote for those things: pure politics. To "stick it" to the left. Nothing to do with the works themselves. Pure politics.

Result, the rending of the clothes, the tearing of the hair, the wailing and cursing of The Left.

From Feb 2015, you have a post complaining about a group trying to get people to stop using "gay" and "retarded" as slurs. You're response? Bigotry that would make your leader VD proud.

The whole thing is so lame I feel retarded for having even read about it.

So, good on you, phantom, you're a bigot doing exactly what master bigot VD wants you to do. Yay you!

Quick search of The Phantom Soapbox shows I mentioned Vox Day precisely zero times before today. I did mention him here in an update today where I mocked Greg.

thephantom: Fair warning Gregy, The Iron Finger is hungry.
*snort*
Yet another demonstration that this is all about how the puppies feel
powerless and are desperate to establish that they have some kind, any
kind, of power. Even if it is only in their mind.
The only reason the stuff you voted for got on the Hugo ballot is
because you voted in lock step with VD’s slate. What else is there to
talk about? More of your false bravado? that’s why you had to “warn”
me, right? Because you’ve got an “Iron Finger” and it it big, and powerful, and will do terrible things to me, right?
You are not some righteous and powerful grassroots political
movement, you’re a bunch of brats who didn’t want to sit at the
children’s table anymore, so you got together and threw the holiday ham
on the floor then demanded to sit with the adults or you’ll throw the
gravy next.
What on earth do you think we would talk about?

You know what we are, Greg? We're winning. We have been winning since the very start, since Correia started SP1. We are exposing you, Greg, as a rabid partisan who will cheerfully make shit up about other people just to be in the Cool Kids group. You and a whole bunch of other people.

Come on Greg, don't fear The Finger. Tell us how you feeeeeeel!

Update II: Here we are a day later and Greg has bravely declined to comment. Probably because he knows I'll demolish his skinny little straw man like a diesel lawn mower.

By email, long time correspondent and SF author Who Shall Remain Nameless Lest The Minions Of Dickness Descend said they could become a successful cat herder faster than they could get The Phantom marching in lock-step with any organization. Kind words, and very true. The Phantom just does not play well with organizations of any sort, be they business, government or religious.

Some call it having high standards, others tell me I'm just contrary and lack social skills. I say hey, why not both! ~:D

Update III: The Greg-ening continues:

thephantom: its an anti-SJW munition. Exposure to it may explode your head.
Munitions? Explode?
My what big guns you have! The power courses through your veins! Such big biceps!
How to recruit a fascist little puppy: find someone powerless and
pathetic. Promise them power and glory if they but march in lockstep to
some cause (any cause really). repeat.

Greg talks some pretty hefty anti-fascismo, but he still hasn't shown his girly face here yet. Must be the biceps. Or the veins, maybe.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Interesting datum popped up today. It seems that according to a study in Britain, most authors earn less than minimum wage.

The research, commissioned by The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, found the top 5 per cent of writers earned close to half of all the income received by professional authors in 2013. The median income for professional writers is just £10,432, less than the minimum wage. Technical and academic writers are among the worst paid.
The report, compiled by Queen Mary, University of London, concluded: "There is a high concentration of earnings in a handful of successful writers whereas most do not earn much at all."

Well, what about the rest of them then?

The bottom half of writers – those who received less than £10,432 in 2013 – earned just 7 per cent of total earnings between them. "It appears that writing is a profession where only a handful of successful authors make a good living while most do not," the report said.

Ok, why is that? Publishers are sticking with the Big Names, apparently. The report doesn't say so, but I expect the profit margins publishers used to enjoy have been eroded away by inflation, taxation and middlemen like Amazon.com.

Then there is the other thing, wherein the "professional organizations" of various literary genres have been taken over by raving Leftists. The one that simply LEAPS to mind is of course the SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. As well, over the last 30 years the awards given for Science Fiction and Fantasy such as the Nebula Awards, the Hugo Awards etc. have uniformly rewarded dreadful message fiction over good stories that have succeeded in the marketplace. Awards go every year to books and stories which most people have never heard of, much less read.

When you reward a behavior, you get more of it.

When you get enough "challenging" stories out there with lame characters who make stupid choices and bad things happen every single time... people stop reading. And authors stop making money.

Pretty simple.

The Phantom

Update: Hi Greg! (Greg is a troll from John Scalzi's blog who is too chickenshit to post here.) For your information and edification old son, I, The Ineffable Phantom, wrote this post. In its entirety.

Vox Day did not write this, nor did he have any input. Nor does he know who I am, nor would he care a damn if he did, I'm sure. I have never read anything by Vox Day, nor have I ever linked to his blog, nor have I even seen his blog that I recall.

Also on a more personal note, should we ever meet in Real Life I will be sure to thank you for labeling me a racist in the time honored way of my People. Who are the Scots.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

In accordance with the "GE Intelligent City Initiate," the "data-collecting" LED streetlights will be placed throughout the city's downtown and surrounding areas.

According to a Thursday morning presentation by GE, the lights will be "interconnected with one another and will collect real-time data," as reported by the Jacksonville Business Journal.

"GE's intelligent LEDs are a gateway to city-changing technology, with sensors, controls, wireless transmitters and microprocessors built within the LED system," GE states.

Now, the linked Jacksonville Business Journal article talks about the "GE Intelligent City Initiative", but it doesn't say what it is. Just that it collects and shares "data" collected by "street lights".

Well, as we all know a street light does not have any data worth sharing. Its only data is if it is turned on or not. Well, unless you are actually talking about a full-on networked PC with camera and microphone and maybe some other infra-red sensors too, maybe a magnetometer, maybe radar, maybe a laser... with a light attached to it.

One of the more relevant, ready-to-go applications is the ability to have smart parking. Through the streetlight sensors, residents can be notified when parking spots are available, or even if their meter might be running out.

What sensors does a "streetlight" need to tell if a parking spot is open or occupied? Camera, obviously. Cheapy little webcam camera you can buy wholesale for $5 would do it. It would do that by taking a picture of all the parking spaces every few seconds. And storing the pictures in its memory. Millions of pictures of all the cars that parked in those spots, the storage of which is trivial. They can be archived virtually forever, available to any casual search.

The "streetlight" also be able to read and record LICENSE PLATES, which when combined with government license records opens all sorts of possibilities for local law enforcement to track people, collect fines, all kinds of stuff.

As well, the "streetlight" will "incidentally" as part of its parking space job take a picture of every single person who walks by it.

Now multiply that by every f-ing streetlight in the city, because remember that this is General Electric we're talking about here. They have the resources to engineer a web-enabled LED "streetlight" that can do all the stuff I said, and a lot more I haven't even thought of yet, and make the whole freakin' package available for the same price as a regular sodium vapor lamp.

Call your local city council and let them know this would be a really, REALLY bad idea.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

As a lover of Belle and Sebastian, I was disappointed, though certainly not surprised. Belle and Sebastian's work is steeped in Whiteness; God Help the Girl merely underscores this. The film itself is an egregious mess that romanticizes a woman's struggles with an eating disorder for the sake of Murdoch's self-promotion. The optimistic, happy-go-lucky and painstakingly adorable aesthetic evidenced in every character he created is founded in Whiteness. Whiteness is beauty; Whiteness is what gives the character the ability to dream of fostering a career in music; Whiteness is what enables the audience to empathize with Eve's character. A recurring filler in the film was a fictitious radio show where two men try to decipher what "real" indie is and every band mentioned is white, enforcing the film's aspirational Whiteness. While Belle and Sebastian aren't the only examples of perpetuating Whiteness through indie rock, this movie serves as a microcosmic view of what is wrought by racial exclusivity that is omnipresent in indie rock.

In indie rock, white is the norm. While indie rock and the DIY underground, historically, have been proud to disassociate themselves from popular culture, there is no divorcing a predominantly white scene from systemic ideals ingrained in white Western culture. That status quo creates a barrier in terms of both the sanctioned participation of artists of color and the amount of respect afforded them, all of which sets people of color up to forever be seen as interlopers and outsiders. Whiteness is the very ideal for which art is made in Western culture, be it the cinema of Wes Anderson or, say, the artists on Merge Records.

Whiteness. Apparently, this is a problem.

But its not racist. Nuh uh. And y'all are a racist for even thinking this might be racist. Because... well I'm not sure why, but RAAAAACIST!!!!!!

Also, nerds are racists. Because anybody who applies Rationalism to anything is RAAAAACIST!!!!! Why, you ask? Asking "why?" is RAAAAACIST!!!!!!!!

Saturday, April 04, 2015

2015 Hugo Nominations

The nominees that follow were chosen by popular vote of members of Loncon 3 (the 2014 Worldcon), Sasquan (the 2015 Worldcon) and MidAmeriCon II (the 2016 Worldcon).
A total of 2122 valid nomination forms were received (2119 online and 3 paper).
A list of the top 15 nominees in each category, along with the number
of nominations received by each, will be released after the Hugo Awards
Ceremony on Saturday, 22 August, 2015 at Sasquan.
Best Novel (1827 nominating ballots)

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)

Lines of Departure by Marco Kloos (47North)

Skin Game by Jim Butcher (Roc Books)

Best Novella (1083 nominating ballots)

Big Boys Don’t Cry by Tom Kratman (Castalia House)

“Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, Nov 2014)

One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (Castalia House)

“Pale Realms of Shade” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)

“The Plural of Helen of Troy by John C. Wright (City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, Castalia House)

Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and the Viper”
written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by Alex Graves (HBO
Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360;
Startling Television and Generator Productions)

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (851 nominating ballots) Award for the best new professional
science fiction or fantasy writer of 2013 or 2014, sponsored by Dell
Magazines (not a Hugo Award).

Wesley Chu*

Jason Cordova

Kary English*

Rolf Nelson

Eric S. Raymond

*Finalists in their 2nd year of eligibility.

Let the SJW head explosions commence.

By the way. I get to vote in this thing, and I voted for people whose books are in my library, or whose works I have read and liked, or whom I have at least heard of. Meaning mostly the Sad Puppies Slate, presently being burnt in effigy all over the Interwebz.

Way to go Sad Puppies for living rent free in exploding SJW heads all over the globe. May the explodiness warm you hearts as it does mine.